We’re hitting the headlines!

Grasmere has been hitting the headlines recently with our studio at the heart of the village’s cultural identity.

The October edition of the glossy and gorgeous This England magazine focused on this part of the Lake District anticipating the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth’s birth next year.

A six-page feature showed how it’s possible to get around here without a car, the London-based writer travelling north by train and then using buses – and boats – to get around.

And it wasn’t all about Wordsworth, with our Studio and Mathilde’s café featured in the main story, and the ‘where to eat’ factbox.

The writer says: “Wordsworth wasn’t the only one inspired by the beauty of Grasmere. The celebrated Lake District landscape painter William Heaton Cooper established the Heaton Cooper Studio here in 1938 to show his paintings and prints as well as the sculptures by his wife, Ophelia Gordon Bell.

“Today you can wander round the studio, galleries and shop, soaking up William’s paintings and those of his father, Alfred, or take tea in Mathilde’s café which is named after William’s mother.”

At the same time, The Waitrose Good Food Guide has been here in the Lakes and recommends: “For a taste of the Cumbrian food revolution, take your walking boots and appetite to Grasmere in the Lake District where you can enjoy everything from tea and cake to fine dining.”

Echoing our feelings entirely, their feature says: “You have only to walk up lovely little Loughrigg to know what William Wordsworth meant when he called Grasmere and its surroundings ‘the loveliest spot that man hath ever found’. Crack open that flask of tea, unwrap your sandwiches and fill up on the view: look down at the village and lake with its familiar backdrop of the Lion and the Lamb (or Helm Crag, to be more prosaic); look beyond to higher fells, Fairfield rolling smoothly in one direction, the unmistakable outline of the craggyLangdale Pikes in another, the Coniston fells further west.

“Grasmere probably has a lot more to offer foodwise than in the days when Wordsworth was wandering these parts. The village sits at the heart of a region whose food has catapulted to recognition in recent years thanks to superlative local ingredients being championed energetically by creative chefs for whom time and place – seasonality and locality – are non-negotiable.”

And thanks to our own local magazine Lancashire Life you can have your own say, and help us win an award which we believe our staff really deserve. You can vote for Mathilde’s in the outstanding customer service category, here https://foodawards.lancashirelife.co.uk/nominate

We think we have a great team here, and hope you will support them. Thank you!